A Love Song for Dreamers - Piper Lawson Page 0,18

got an idea for a song or a line I need to write down.

It’s because of shrieking in the distance.

I tug on tailored black shorts and a white tank top I brought from New York and head downstairs, but by the time I get there, it’s quiet. The morning sun spills in through the huge kitchen windows and the slider doors. The only sign of life is Haley moving around the cavernous space, making coffee in a flowing black top.

“Everyone alive?” I ask.

She turns, smiling. “Your dad took Sophie to daycare. She’s always loved it, but recently, she’s not a fan. Oliver doesn’t like her and she doesn’t like Teddy.”

She’s moving slowly toward the fridge, either from tiredness or her gigantic belly, and I spring into action. “You sit down. I’ll make breakfast.”

I grab a carton of eggs, some bacon, and cheese for good measure, plus a huge frying pan from a cupboard, before turning on the gas.

“Why did you invite me without telling Dad?” I ask over my shoulder. “I shouldn’t be mad at a pregnant woman. But I am.”

“It was kind of a dick move, but my heart was in the right place. I wasn’t sure I could get you both here with your guards down otherwise.”

I drop four strips of bacon into the pan. “I shouldn’t have lied to him—to both of you—about school, but he overreacted when he found out.”

“I get why you feel that way. I do. But if you look for evidence to be angry with someone, you’ll always find it. What kind of place would the world be if we stopped weighing and measuring mistakes, and using those measurements to define our relationships? Maybe we’d be able to choose how we want to feel about other people from love instead of judgement.”

I crack eggs into the remaining half of the simmering pan, watching the whites spread.

“How come Dad has eight years on you, but you’re the sensible one?”

She snorts. “The question for you,” she continues, “isn’t whether you want to be part of this family, but how you want to be part of it. I’m the one with the least say, but for what it’s worth, I’d love for you to be here to celebrate days like yesterday. To feel like this is your home when you need one. I want to see you and your dad laugh when Sophie names her trucks after eighties bands and races them down the hallway. I want all of us to raise a glass to you when you conquer the world, or when you go down trying.”

I don’t know how I’m going to settle things with my dad, but hearing how Haley talks, seeing the three of them together, knowing I’ll have a new half brother or sister soon, I want to be a part of it.

The plates are in the same cabinet they used to be, and I retrieve two.

I finish cooking our breakfast and set both plates in front of us. Haley chuckles as she takes in the flower design I made on her plate with syrup.

“I figured no one’s done this for you lately.”

She smiles. “You’d be right. Does this mean you’re not mad anymore?”

“Jury’s still out.”

I drop into the seat across from her, and we dig in.

“How’s the musical coming? You told me you’re working with mostly the same team, but you and your writing partner are leading this time instead of following.” She reaches for her mug.

Nervous energy has me swallowing an extra big bite of egg. “It’s going to be amazing. Creatively, it’s been going well until now. We have ten songs written, but I’m struggling to drag it across the finish line. It’s not like I can’t write anything. But nothing seems to matter enough. Nothing feels good enough or big enough or true enough.”

I’ve spent hours a day trying to get myself out of this rut—reading, going for walks, brainstorming... I even bought a dream journal which, so far, succeeded in telling me I spend way too much of my subconscious thinking about pastries.

“The end is always the hardest.”

“Right? And I’ve been distracted because the funders…” I savagely bite into a piece of bacon. “The money is complicated. We have a reading scheduled with prospective funders at the end of the summer. Miranda and I thought it would be a slam dunk, but it’s looking harder every day.”

Because Ian was supposed to fund this.

Ian was not, however, supposed to fuck another woman, particularly the afternoon I walked into